Promising Peter (Bad Boy Alphas) (Shrew & Company Book 6) (11 page)

Drea sat at the edge off the bed and nodded. “There’s nothing I can do now. Yes, he humiliated me time and time again. Hurt me and had his enforcers hurt me, too. He made me scared to go anywhere because I knew every move I made was being watched.” She pulled her underwear up her shins and stood to wriggle them up the rest of the way. “I don’t have to be there getting in my lashes and strikes. I’d feel good if I had a hand in taking him down, but I’d just be getting in the way. I’ll leave the work up to the ones who are actually equipped to do the job.”

“Good logic,” Tamara said. “Then let’s go home so Dana can see you’re truly alive and well. If you’re going to fret anyway, you might as well worry where you’re comfortable.”

“Are you going to be doing much fretting?”

Tamara’s cheek twitched. She cracked a couple of her knuckles and shifted her weight. “You would think I wouldn’t worry about Bryan with him being the alpha, right?”

“I wouldn’t dare think that.”

“Good. You shouldn’t. Bryan puts on a tough front, but he’s like you in some ways. The things Gene did scarred him, and he regrets not killing him when he had the chance. Perhaps he doesn’t let the regret cripple him, but I think sometimes, it makes him cold. I don’t want people to think he’s cold.”

“Everyone who knows him already knows that he’s not.”

Tamara nodded and stuffed her hands into her pockets. “I’m more worried about the strangers whose first meeting with him is one where he has his fangs out and he’s making that unholy growling sound. He’s really just a teddy bear.”

Drea grinned and shoved her arms through her bra straps. “I wouldn’t go as far as to say that, but I get your point.”

Bear men really
did
get a bad rap sometimes. But the greatest secret of Bear women is that they knew how to deal with them. Drea was pretty sure she knew how to deal with Peter.

She’d give him exactly what every born-Bear male wanted: a reason to go home every night. For the moment, though, she had to do her part in the scheme and stay out of his way. Hopefully, he’d come around when he was done.

Dana leaned against the Shrew & Company hall wall the following day in her usual detective-chic ensemble of very nice black leather boots with heels, dark jeans, and a crisp, white button-up shirt that concealed a couple of weapon bulges at her hips. She bobbed her dark eyebrows at Drea and cleared her throat.

Oh, boy.

Drea knew that Dana wasn’t
really
going to yell at her for her temporary absence, but she was so used to expecting people to fly off the handle that sometimes, rational responses were almost a letdown.

Drea squirmed uncomfortably in her rolling chair and tried not to look away from her boss.

That look… She already knows too much.

“So,” Dana started.

Ohhhh, crap.

“Are you hungry?”

“Um…” Drea glanced at the clock on her computer. It was barely nine. “I had some coffee. I haven’t had time to go the grocery store. Tam and I got back into the area around dawn. I only had time to catch a quick nap. I figured I’d just have a big lunch.”

“Lunch is too far from now. I’ll order bagels. There’s a new New York bagel place down the street. I’m sure if I ask nicely enough, they’ll run them over.”

“Why would they do that?”

“The guy who owns the place is a transplant, new to Patrick’s group. A Cougar from Washington, I think.”

“A Cougar from Washington owns a New York-style bagel place? Can we even trust them?”

“I asked the same thing,” Tamara called from the inner bowels of Shrew & Company.

The office suite had a wide reception area at the front—where Drea’s desk was. A hallway beside her desk lead to the newly-enlarged conference room, the small staff kitchen, two tiny bathrooms, the supply closet, and then the five office spaces—Dana’s being at the end of the hall facing the front door. The other four Shrews shared two and two. They still hadn’t gotten used to having the space and didn’t see a reason to spread out yet. Dana had enlarged the office when the business behind them in the old warehouse building went kaput.

Dana shrugged. “He just owns the shop. His wife and sons do most of the cooking, from what I hear. His wife is the one with the street cred.”

“Oh,” Drea said. “Well, I could eat.” She shook her mouse to wake up her computer. “Is there a menu online? We could put together a list and I’ll call them.”

“I’ve got the menu. Hold on.” Dana retreated down the hall, and Sarah stepped up in her place with her baby, Gabrielle, slung across her chest. Sarah was the operations lady in Dana’s absence. She kept the lights on and made sure the payroll company didn’t mess up their checks. And she was an ex-Marine. She was one of Shrew & Company’s stronger field agents when she wasn’t on diaper duty.

“I thought you were still on maternity leave,” Drea said. “I hope you didn’t come in just because…”

Drea’s cheeks burned, and she turned away to look at nothing in particular on her computer screen.
Because of me
. She didn’t want to think about the reason the Shrews might have been worried, because when she thought about that,
she
started to worry about what Peter and Bryan were up to.

She was certain they were fine. Tamara would have been able to sense otherwise from Bryan if anything bad had happened, but being away from Peter made Drea twitchy with a whole new kind of anxiety. They’d left things undone, and the anal retentive admin in her didn’t like that.

“We’re all here,” Sarah said.

“Astrid, too? And Maria?”

“Everyone. They’re only quiet back there right now because they’re watching some security footage Soren fed to us overnight. They’ll be up in a minute. We’ve got business stuff to hash out.”

“Soren?” Drea sat up a little straighter. “Did they find—”

“Yeah. The guys believe Gene is laying low in a little podunk town in Delaware, but he’s made a lot of enemies. People are keeping an eye on him for us and are ratting him out, because they’re tired of him moving through their communities and disrupting things. The men are waiting to make a move when they can do so cleanly.”

“You mean without leaving behind any evidence or being seen.”

Sarah let out a ragged breath. “Obviously, we’d prefer to take him alive so we can make him call off his dogs. We’d like everyone to know that the empire of terror and narcotics he’s built is crumbling now, and that all the illegal dealings that he set up when he was in charge are no longer going to be tolerated.”

Dana eased around Sarah and slid the menu onto Drea’s desk. “Probably best to order the sampler box with a variety of cream cheeses. We can keep whatever’s left of them in the fridge.”

“I’ll get the order in right now.” Drea reached for her desk phone’s handset. “He’s not going to give up all that information about his accomplices and business partners,” she said to Sarah as she dialed.

“You don’t think so?”

Drea shook her head. “A guy like him…he’d make something of that network even from prison.”

“Well, we don’t plan on sending him to a normal prison.” Astrid joined the group and plopped into the armchair in the corner nearest the door. “We have a special place for him.”

“Too bad it’s not filled with flames and brimstone.” Tamara entered the space, too, with Maria on her heels. “What we have prepared for him will do fine, though.”

A worker at the bagel shop came on the line, and Drea quickly put the order in and asked for someone to walk it over. As Dana had speculated, they were happy to do so.

Drea turned to the ladies milling around her desk. “So, you said something about a meeting? We could move to the conference room. Might be more comfortable there.”

The Shrews shared a complicated five-way look. They did that a lot. It was rarely a good sign.

“Oh, no. Did something happen?”

Dana shook her head and put her hands up. “Okay, look. We’re not trying to be weird and secretive—at least, no more than usual. We just have a lot of things to run down, and I imagine we’re all wondering what order we need to do them in.”

“Are some of those things of a…
personal
nature?” Drea asked.

Dana shared a look with Tamara, and then fixed her gaze back on Drea. “Yes.”

“I see.”

“Listen, you don’t have to tell us anything you don’t want to. Tamara has told us a little, but we need to hear from you, too.”

“You mean about Peter?”
Please don’t make me talk about Peter
. If she talked about Peter, she was going to cry.

He’d been right there within her grips—almost her mate, but they’d left things undone. He could get over her, still, and find someone more suitable the next time the season came. Perhaps a nice Romanian girl like Tamara who had the right attitude to be the mate of an alpha Bear. Someone who wouldn’t have waited until she was in her twenties to decide that something was wrong with her and that she should do something to fix what was broken.

Drea had wasted so many years feeling useless and disjointed. She felt so much better, but undoing past decisions she’d made out of fear would take some time.

“Not specifically about Peter.” Dana sat on the corner of the desk. “Though that topic may come up again later. We’re talking about
you
.”

“Me?”

“Mm-hmm. How are you feeling?”

Drea shrugged. “Tired. Hungry. Restless, because I need to be making myself busy, you know?” Also a little lovesick, and maybe a lot horny. She wasn’t going to share that information with the ladies, though.

“Tamara says getting a read on you is harder now. You’re not as psychically present to other born-Bears as you were before. I guess you’re not hitting their radar anymore.”

“I’m sorry. I knew there was a chance that would happen, but I didn’t see where I had a choice.”

“We’re not blaming you for what you had to do. If you’re happy,
we’re
happy. We just need to make
sure
that you’re happy, and discerning when you need a boost is going to be harder for us now. You’ve always been one of those people who smiles through misery, so we can’t tell when we need to intervene. You’ve got to help us help you.”

Drea stared down at the foam wrist rest in front of her keyboard and fiddled with the fraying corner. “I’ve never been very good at that. I’m so used to being the weak link, and I learned to keep my mouth shut about how I couldn’t keep up a long time ago. Otherwise I would have always been asking for help.”

“We don’t work that way,” Maria said. “Not well, anyway. Trust me, I know what it’s like to bottle things up because you don’t want to burden people with one more issue after they’ve already helped you so much. But the thing is, we
have
to ask, because if we don’t, we’ll never get any better. We learn something every time we have to ask for help. Eventually, we figure out which problems we can solve on our own and which ones we shouldn’t even try to tackle without help.”

“Don’t be afraid to need us a lot right now,” Astrid said.

Sarah nodded and rocked from side to side, settling her fussy, teething baby. “We know better than anyone the shit you’ve been through, and remember—there are
five
of us. This isn’t like when all you had was Bryan and you stopped wanting to burden him. You can come to one or all of us with any issue, large or small, and we’ll find a solution.”

“Just consider us your second clan,” Dana said with a chuckle.

“A second clan.” Drea nodded and met her gaze. “I like that. I…
need
that.”

“Good.” Dana reached over and gave Drea’s shoulder a squeeze. “Now, with that out of the way, we need to talk about business stuff. I’m hesitant to move into the conference room just yet because we’re expecting visitors.”

“Who?”

“A potential new hire and couple of independent contractors we’re considering bringing on short-term. I need you to run background checks on a couple of Coyotes.” Dana looked down at her new watch—one just like Drea’s. “They should be here in about ninety minutes. Before that, we’re expecting Maria’s sister Marcella.”

“She’s interested in seeing what the company is about while she’s in the area,” Maria said. “She may have a skill set suitable for the job.”

“Oh. Well, I’d love to have a longer chat with her. You ladies have been so overcommitted lately. It’d be nice to have some extra personnel on hand so you could take some time off.”

“My thoughts exactly,” Dana said. “I’ve got to make a phone call. You ladies shoot the shit for a few minutes until the bagels get here. This shouldn’t take me long.”

As soon as Dana disappeared down the hallway, the main entrance buzzer sounded.

Drea cleared some of the open windows on her computer and squinted at the security camera’s feed. “Oh. It’s Doc.” She cringed. “Oh. It’s
Doc
.”

Tamara chucked low. “You know how she is. She’s going to want to get her poking and prodding time in.”

“You called her, didn’t you?”

“No, Peter did.”

“What?”

Tamara shrugged. “He’s curious, I guess.”

Because he’s changed his mind?

Drea didn’t regret doing what she’d had to do, but she’d understand if Peter had decided some other Bear would be a more suitable mate for him. Him cutting his losses early could possibly prevent them both from being miserable down the road. As badly as she wanted him, she didn’t want to be kept if he were only going to keep her for a little while.

She put on a smile for the Shrews, anyway, and pulled her corporate coffee mug closer. She hit the unlock button for the outer door, and stood. “Be right back. I’m going to go fill this before Doc sets her sights on me.”

The Shrews blocking the hall stepped back to make a path for her, and Drea didn’t let her smile fall away until she was in front of the sink and rinsing her mug.

She didn’t want to think it would have been so easy for a Bear to turn off his affections. Were-bears mated for life. But, given the circumstances, maybe the Bear goddess had seen fit to give Peter an out.

She dried the sides and bottom of the mug and set the cup in front of the coffeemaker.

Drea didn’t want an out, though. She wanted Peter.

Why does everything have to be up to him? Don’t I get a say?